September 18, 2015

Scotland has banned genetically modified organisms (GMOs) within its country. "Scotland is known around the world for our beautiful natural environment—and banning growing genetically modified crops will protect and further enhance our clean, green status," said rural affairs secretary Richard Lochhead. Here in the US the fight is just for the right to know that a food product should be labeled as GMO, and that's not going so well.

Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1599, the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015. This is BS, of course, since the bill's real purpose is to preempt the rights of state and local governments to pass laws requiring the mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), to overturn GMO labeling laws already in place in several states, and to prevent the passage of any federal mandatory GMO labeling law in the future. So there is no free speech insofar as knowing what's in something we are eating is concerned. The law's attempt is to suppress truth in labeling.

GMOs were developed primarily to be resistant to Monsanto's Roundup so that Roundup could be sprayed directly on crops and only the weeds would die. So whether or not GMO corn and soybeans are good or bad for you, the presence of poison sprayed on them can't be too good for human consumers when they eat such crops. Especially crops such as grapes and apples which have very thin skins and are vulnerable to soaking up the herbicides and pesticides sprayed on them.

The GMO process starts with the seeds only available from Monsanto which grow into the Roundup resistant corn and soybeans which must be purchased on an annual basis from Monsanto. Farmers who save seeds from the current crop are subject to lawsuits by Monsanto which claims the GMO seeds as their intellectual private property.

Food activist Vandana Shiva has been delivering a message that she has honed for nearly three decades: by engineering, patenting, and transforming seeds into costly packets of intellectual property, multinational corporations such as Monsanto, with considerable assistance from the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the United States government, and even philanthropies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are attempting to impose “food totalitarianism” on the world. She describes the fight against agricultural biotechnology as a global war against a few giant seed companies on behalf of the billions of farmers who depend on what they themselves grow to survive. Shiva contends that nothing less than the future of humanity rides on the outcome.

Ever increasing amounts of Monsanto's poison are being sprayed on crops that American consumers are eating as super weeds have adapted to the stuff and are growing bigger than ever requiring more and more Roundup to kill them. The only rational solution is to go back to natural organic ways of dealing with weeds and pests as Monsanto's GMO crops are not sustainable. The only rationale for using Monsanto's GMO seeds and herbicides is that the farmers can get a larger crop yield per acre and thus make more money. But quality rather than quantity is what savvy American consumers are demanding more and more. So the market for organic food is growing. Organic food is non-GMO food that hasn't been sprayed with pesticides or herbicides. With regard to animals they haven't been fed GMO corn or soy and haven't been given antibiotics or hormones.

San Diego Loves Roundup

San Diego is spraying Monsanto's Roundup (generic name - glyphosate) all over its freeways, public lands and waterways exposing San Diegans to this poison whenever they are driving or boating. In a letter to the editor of the San Diego Union, Susan Trump of North Part said this:

San Diego is liberally using Roundup, glyphosate, on public lands and waterways.

Entire countries such as France, Sri Lanka, Brazil and South Africa are banning the substance. We are past the age of ignorance. We understand the consequences and it is generally known that Roundup is not safe for humans, plants, insects or animals, yet its use continues to the extent that it is now in the food supply.

What does your grocery shelf and San Diego’s bay water have in common? Monsanto and its poisons!

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According to the French agency, glyphosate is used in more than 750 different herbicide products and its use has been detected in the air during spraying, in water and in food. Experts said there was "limited evidence" in humans that the herbicide can cause non-Hodgkins lymphoma and there is convincing evidence that glyphosate can also cause other forms of cancer in rats and mice. IARC's panel said glyphosate has been found in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, showing the chemical has been absorbed by the body.

Monsanto, which produces the glyphosate-containing herbicide, Roundup, strongly disagreed with the decision. "All labeled uses of glyphosate are safe for human health," said Phil Miller, a Monsanto spokesman, in a statement. (Did you know that this horrible stuff is routinely found in toxic screening on umbilical cord blood in our babies?)

And what did our own EPA say about this compound? “The EPA's 2012 assessment of glyphosate concluded that it met the statutory safety standards and that the chemical could "continue to be used without unreasonable risks to people or the environment."

About 180 million pounds per year are dumped on your food. It’s a systemic poison for plants, meaning the entire plant takes it up. More is deliberately dumped on “Roundup Ready” soy, etc. They are literally drenched and drowning in the toxic soup. Monsanto engineered crops to be resistant to a chemical it can more readily sell. It’s a win-win for the most evil company on the planet. Make and sell seeds of crops resistant to a poison it sells. And buy the government so that you will not be able to be informed if what you buy is GMO, and where possible get these bought off cronies to spoon-feed the public that your wares are safe. Now an ignorant public will be forced to buy and ingest your Frankenfoods and all the cancer causing poisons that have been sprayed on them. What a tremendous and diabolical scheme.

Nathan Donley, staff scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco said that this is a major victory in the fight against dangerous pesticides.

“California’s taking an important step toward protecting people and wildlife from this toxic pesticide. It’s nearly impossible for people to limit exposure to this toxin because it is just so widespread. That’s why we need much tighter controls on its use,” Donley said.

“More than 250 million pounds of glyphosate are used each year in the United States, and the science is clear that it’s a threat to public health and countless wildlife species. It’s long past time to start reining in the out-of-control use of glyphosate in the United States,” he added.

Shop Organic for the Sake of Your Family's Health

So shopping organic and buying from local farmers makes more sense if you want to protect your family's health. GMO crops won't kill you immediately. Glyphosate won't kill you immediately. That's safe to say. But cancer rates are going skyward for all segments of the population as toxic chemicals permeate our diets and our lifestyles. There is no proven link between GMOs and cancer, but common sense dictates that unnatural chemicals as part of our diet aren't good for us regardless of the lower prices for such foods. It's better to pay a little more and protect your family's health. Like cigarettes, GMOs sprayed with glyphosate won't kill you immediately, but cancer will eventually get you. Monsanto's role is to deny the link between the two as long as they possibly can.

To be sure GMOs allow for more food production per acre if you want to call it food. It's actually Frankenfood. But the demographics of the growth of human population are indeed scary:

The global food supply is indeed in danger. Feeding the expanding population without further harming the Earth presents one of the greatest challenges of our time, perhaps of all time. By the end of the century, the world may well have to accommodate ten billion inhabitants—roughly the equivalent of adding two new Indias. Sustaining that many people will require farmers to grow more food in the next seventy-five years than has been produced in all of human history. For most of the past ten thousand years, feeding more people simply meant farming more land. That option no longer exists; nearly every arable patch of ground has been cultivated, and irrigation for agriculture already consumes seventy per cent of the Earth’s freshwater.

But we shouldn't panic and conclude that GMOs are the only way to go. There are natural methods to produce more food. One way is to reduce the production of beef and encourage a more vegetarian diet. Beef cows consume tremendous amounts of grains in order to produce one pound of meat. If humans consumed the grains directly, more could be fed and more water would be available for human consumption rather than the vast quantities required for animal production.

In addition beef cows are fed tremendous amounts of hormones and antibiotics in order to fatten them up and grow to maturity faster. Whatever animal protein humans consume should be organic for the same reasons that vegetables need to be non-GMO and organic if one's family's health means more than the slightly increased dietary costs. Money can be saved by not eating out which costs about five times as much as the same meal prepared at home, and what's more most restaurants are serving GMO and non-organic foods. Most restaurants are serving GMO foods and animals who have consumed them unless stated otherwise. Their whole trip is to make foods taste good without regard to whether or not those foods are good for you. So you pay through the nose and get a dose of poison to boot.

1. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) urges doctors to prescribe non-GMO diets for all patients. They cite animal studies showing organ damage, gastrointestinal and immune system disorders, accelerated aging, and infertility. Human studies show how genetically modified (GMO) food can leave material behind inside us, possibly causing long-term problems. Genes inserted into GM soy, for example, can transfer into the DNA of bacteria living inside us, and that the toxic insecticide produced by GM corn was found in the blood of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses.

2. Between 1996 and 2008, US farmers sprayed an extra 383 million pounds of herbicide on GMOs. Overuse of Roundup results in "superweeds," resistant to the herbicide. This is causing farmers to use even more toxic herbicides every year. Not only does this create environmental harm, GM foods contain higher residues of toxic herbicides. Roundup, for example, is linked with sterility, hormone disruption, birth defects, and cancer.

3. Most of the health and environmental risks of GMOs are ignored by governments' superficial regulations and safety assessments. The reason for this tragedy is largely political. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for example, doesn't require a single safety study, does not mandate labeling of GMOs, and allows companies to put their GM foods onto the market without even notifying the agency.

Their justification was the claim that they had no information showing that GM foods were substantially different. But this was a lie. Secret agency memos made public by a lawsuit show that the overwhelming consensus even among the FDA's own scientists was that GMOs can create unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects. They urged long-term safety studies. But the White House had instructed the FDA to promote biotechnology, and the agency official in charge of policy was Michael Taylor, Monsanto's former attorney, later their vice president. He's now the US Food Safety Czar.

Will the US be the Last to Ban Monsanto's GMOs?

Many other countries are not falling for Monsanto's corporate nonsense and are labeling or outright banning GMOs. As I wrote previously:

Russia is considering legislation to criminalize GMO foods describing GMO food producers as terrorists. France, the largest agricultural producer in Europe, is preparing to restore a GMO maize ban in their country. Twenty-six countries, including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy and Mexico, have a total or partial ban on GMOs. Significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.

Why does the US insist on doing the opposite by passing legislation that prevents states from banning or even labeling GMOs?

Even supposedly healthy restaurants like Subway are purveying meats from animals that have been factory farmed. This means they have been fed vast quantities of pesticide and herbicide sprayed corn and soy. They have been given huge amounts of antibiotics and hormones. Then they are made into sandwiches that people eat.

Subway's slogan is, "Eat fresh." But while the company may have established itself as the "healthy" fast-food alternative, many people don't realize that as the world's largest fast food chain, it is also contributing to a serious public health crisis, animal cruelty and environmental damage due to the company's use of meat from factory farmed animals. These filthy and inhumane operations cause an incomprehensible amount of animal suffering, poison our air, land and water, and give rise to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that impact human health.

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"Every year, more than two million people in the United States get infections that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die as a result," according to a 2013 report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "In addition to the illness and deaths caused by resistant bacteria, the report found that C. difficile, a serious diarrheal infection usually associated with antibiotic use, causes at least 250,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths every year."

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“Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda of WHO. “Effective antibiotics have been one of the pillars allowing us to live longer, live healthier, and benefit from modern medicine. Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods and the implications will be devastating.”

The antibiotics used to fatten animals are hastening the day when they won't be effective against antibiotic-resistant bacteria and humans will die from minor infections as they used to before antibiotics were invented. And this is all so that factory farmers can make a few more dollars by bringing animals to market in less time.

Unless Americans wise up to where their food is coming from particularly restaurant foods, they are putting themselves at risk for diseases for which there aren't proven links to toxic substances in the food supply. These toxicities are put there so the corporate food giants and corporate farmers can make more money than they would have if they had supplied food products which hadn't been sprayed with toxic substances or had toxic foods fed to animals which are then butchered and fed to humans. As long as the link between these practices and actual human disease remains hazy, these corporations will continue to get away with it much as the cigarette manufacturers got away with selling a product that it took years to prove that it was cancer causing.

July 27, 2014

Apples treated with diphenylamine (DPA), a substance which keeps them from turning brown for months at a time when they are kept in storage, is now a sore spot for importers of American apples.

It’s sad when one of the biggest ‘super powers’ can’t even export a quintessentially American food to another country because it is too toxic to eat. But apples treated with diphenylamine (DPA), a substance which keeps them from turning brown for months at a time when they are kept in storage, is now a sore spot for importers of American apples.

DPA isn’t harmful all by itself, but it breaks down into carcinogogenic elements. It’s been used since 1962, but was banned in the European Union in 2012 since producers couldn’t answer inquiries about its safety. European food safety regulators wanted more information on it, but none could be summoned. The apple industry simply responded with one study “that detected three unknown chemicals on DPA-treated apples, but it could not determine if any of these chemicals, apparently formed when the DPA broke down, were nitrosamines.”

British scientists, John Barnes and Peter Magee, in 1956, reported that dimethylnitrosamine produced liver tumors in rats, and later went on to test other nitrosamines and N-nitroso compounds. They found that the compounds caused all kinds of problems, including liver cancer, lung cancer, and even botulism.

Caution: GMO, Non-Browning Arctic Apple Coming Soon“Nitrosamines occur commonly because their chemical precursors–amines and nitrosating agents–occur commonly, and the chemical reaction for nitrosamine formation is quite facile. Research on the prevention or reduction of nitrosamine formation has been productive, and most of the items shown in the table contain considerably lower amounts of nitrosamines than they did a few decades ago.”

No wonder European officials were concerned. In 2012, they slashed the allowable levels of DPA on apples to 0.1 parts per million, but now they don’t want those gleaming, spot-free apples normally seen on super market shelves in the States, at all. DPA residues were found on over 80 samples taken from US imports, with an average reading of 0.42 parts per million, well above their ‘allowable’ level.

Funny then, how the U.S. EPA Office of Pesticides tasked with reviewing all pesticides and chemicals on our agricultural produce told the EWG that they had no idea their was a ban on DPA. The EPA then had the nerve to tell the EWG that they had no intention of reviewing DPA safety standards, in light of European’s refusal to eat our poisoned fruit.

Reminds you of the Snow White fairy tale, doesn’t it. Here, little lady, eat the fruit. The Europeans said no thanks, and the rest of us would be better off getting our apples from a bunch of cutely named dwarves.

Christina Sarich is a humanitarian and freelance writer helping you to Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. She also writes exclusive articles for NationofChange. Her blog is Yoga for the New World. Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing the Body And Mind Through the Art of Yoga.

May 25, 2014

To be labeled as "USDA organic," 95% of the ingredients must be organically grown and the remaining 5% may be non-organic agricultural ingredients or synthetic substances that have been approved for use in organics by the USDA. The 5% of non-organic products are usually derived from GMO corn which is highly sprayed with Monsanto's Roundup. It's a little known fact that some organic packaged foods contain GMOs and pesticides thanks to the lobbying efforts of Big Organic corporations.

For example, consider a container of O organic Tomato Basil soup, a product of Canada, purchased at Sprout's. The ingredient list includes organic tomatoes, organic tomato pulp, citric acid, calcium chloride, organic tomato paste, citric acid, organic cream, a long list of other organic ingredients and finally citric acid. Why you might ask is there so much citric acid listed and is it organic? Evidently not or it would have been listed as "organic citric acid."

The fact is that citric acid does not even come from citric fruit like oranges or lemons. You might have envisioned workers pouring vats of freshly squeezed lemon or orange juice into the product. No, my good friend, citric acid is a product derived from GMO corn! Cheap corn permeates every facet of the American diet ... even organics! Its derivatives including citric acid are used as preservatives, taste enhancers and a whole variety of other things.

Citric acid is produced using a mold, Aspergillus niger. The mold is grown in the presence of a carbohydrate to produce citric acid. In order to get higher yields, genetically modified Aspergillus niger is employed. Besides the genetically modified mold being used, the carbohydrate "food" that the mold metabolizes is often genetically modified corn.

Why, you might ask, is an ingredient derived from GMO corn allowed to go under the name of "citric acid"? This is from cornucopia.org:

On September 26, 2012, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a rule that continues its policy of allowing the indiscriminate and illegal addition of synthetic nutrients to organic foods. Nutrients occur naturally in foods, and many are essential for good health. But organic consumers expect the nutrients in their foods to be naturally occurring rather than added synthetics that are mass produced in factories by chemical corporations, often using hazardous petrochemical substances.

So USDA policy allows the "indiscriminate and illegal use" of synthetic products such as those derived from GMO corn and they also allow the description of those products on the packaging in a deceptive manner as long as it is chemically identical to the real thing. Even if you buy organic, the citric acid in that organic food is most likely made with GMO products and processes unless explicitly stated to the contrary.

Why is citric acid used in foods? It sharpens taste and acts as a food preservative. That's why it's in so many organic packaged food products. Citric acid is found in a huge number of products and is used in numerous processes: from shampoo to soda to cheese to beer making to candy to medicine to varnish remover.

Citric acid has been linked to gastrointestinal problems and also to problems associated with the loss of dental enamel. In a study at the University of Bristol, UK, the increasing incidence of enamel erosion was causally connected to the high amounts of citric acid added to drinks and food.

It is important to check the nutrition list on the labels of packaged organic products to avoid exposure to GMOs. Citric acid is one of the worst offenders. It may be chemically identical to citric acid from oranges and lemons, but it was produced in an industrial process not involving any citric fruits whatsoever. In fact it was probably produced using a GMO mold and GMO corn.

It is better to deal with local farmers since most organic products found in stores come from food giants which have bought out what started as small organic operations. In 1995 there were 81 independent organic processing companies in the United States. A decade later, Big Food had gobbled up all but 15 of them. Many iconic organic brands are owned by the titans of junk food, processed food and sugary beverages—the same corporations that spent millions to defeat GMO labeling initiatives in California and Washington. General Mills (which owns Muir Glen, Cascadian Farm, and LaraBar), Coca-Cola (Honest Tea, Odwalla), J.M. Smucker (R.W. Knudsen, Santa Cruz Organic), and many other corporate owners of organic brands contributed big bucks to deny citizens’ right to know what is in their food.

Other Big Food operators who have found it lucrative to get into the organic market are the following. The amounts they've contributed to fight GMO labeling in California (Prop 37) and Washington State (I-522) are in parenthesis:

WASHINGTON, May 8, 2014 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that USDA is making a historic $78 million investment in local and regional food systems, including food hubs, farmers markets, aggregation and processing facilities, distribution services, and other local food business enterprises.

“The 2014 Farm Bill has given USDA new tools, resources and authority to support the rural economy,” Vilsack said. “Consumer demand for locally-produced food is strong and growing, and farmers and ranchers are positioning their businesses to meet that demand. As this sector continues to mature, we see aggregation, processing, and distribution enterprises across the local food supply chain growing rapidly. These historic USDA investments in support of local food give farmers and ranchers more market opportunities, provide consumers with more choices, and create jobs in both rural and urban communities.”

Russia is considering legislation to criminalize GMO foods describing GMO food producers as terrorists. France, the largest agricultural producer in Europe, is preparing to restore a GMO maize ban in their country. Twenty-six countries, including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy and Mexico, have a total or partial ban on GMOs. Significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.

On May 8, Peter Shumlin, Governor of Vermont, signed a historic bill requiring food manufacturers to label genetically engineered (GE) foods, and to drop the practice of labeling GE foods as “natural” or “all natural.” Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) has threatened to sue the state of Vermont. New research has found that glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, is actually found in the breast milk of women, leading to damage to underdeveloped human beings.

In 2014, half the states will likely consider placing special labels on food that use genetically modified organisms (GMOs), according to Pamela M. Prah at PEW’s Stateline. “Big Food” is ready for the challenge though and will use its influence and resources to protect profits gained from GMOs that are found in 80 percent of the food America consumes.

Mark Smallwood remembers gardening with his grandmother in Ohio when he was a kid. They used organic farming techniques because, to his grandma, that was just how gardening was done.

“I don’t think [my grandma] could pronounce the word, ‘chemical,’” he said in an email. “Everything we did was organic.”

Today Smallwood is the executive director of the Rodale Institute, which works to create new sustainable and organic food production models for the world to follow. Smallwood has watched organic farming evolve and grow over the years, mainly via dedicated small-time farmers in pockets across the country. When Walmart announced plans to open a new line of super-cheap organic foods, Smallwood's reaction was mixed. Like many Smallwood recognized the potential for Walmart--the nation's biggest grocer-- to expand the organic foods model. But, while some food justice advocates have welcomed the move as it promises to make organic foods available to the masses, Smallwood says there is a good reason organics are priced the way they are. He fears lowering the price of organic foods would fail to reflect their true production costs, and Walmart organics could ultimately threaten the greater organic farming world.

After a 20 year career as a basketball coach in Ohio, Smallwood took over an organic farm in Kent, Connecticut.

“I drove oxen instead of using a tractor,” he said. “In my last year there, we used about 43 gallons of gas for the entire year.”

At the time, this made Smallwood part of a small sector of farmers—many of them ‘hippies’—who refused to use what they recognized to be harmful chemicals on their crops.

When he left the farm, Smallwood worked in a small organic market called MOM’s (My Organic Market). Then, Whole Foods recruited him to help 40 stores divert their waste from the landfill, and source food locally—a move that was unprecedented at the time.

Smallwood has seen huge expansions in the organic food production, particularly in the last decade. What started as a niche trend is now a booming billion dollar industry, held together primarily by a network of small farms that provide food to local community sources.

“Ten years ago, the organic industry was an $11.7 billion industry,” he said. “At the end of 2012 it was up to $31.5 billion. Every year organic sees double digit growth. The growth has been amazing and when we talk with policy makers in D.C. now, for instance, it’s no longer the image of a small organic farmer with four acres and a hog. This is mainstream now—this is an industry worth over $31.5 billion.”

There's a Right Way and a Wrong Way to Do Organic Farming

When you think about it, the term ‘organic farming’ is a misnomer. Really, we should be saying “chemical farming” to describe farming practices that uses pesticides and other toxic concoctions, and just plain “farming” to describe organic practices, sans chemicals. Instead, chemicals are the norm in the agriculture world—so much so that farming without them is the weird, “alternative,” method with labeling requirements to boot.

Prior to the 1920s, “organic” was the only agriculture because chemical pesticides and soil amendments had yet to be invented. After World War II, researchers figured out that chemicals designed for use as nerve gas during the war could also kill insects. This changed the game. Farmers rushed to get ahold of the new miracle sprays that promised a pest-free crop, year round. Giant commercial farms, today's Big Ag factory farms, developed around the use of pesticides—which they still rely on today.

Studies have, of course, revealed that dousing our food in toxic chemicals isn’t by any means benign. According to the Environment Protection Agency, as well as countless other researchers, chemical pesticides pose significant risks tohuman health as well as the environment. Pesticides are linked with cancer and other illnesses, and as they seep into the soil they pollute nearby trees and watersheds, and wreak havoc on soil quality as well as animal life. Several animal and insect “pests,” (and weeds) have developed resistance to various pesticides, so farmers have increased the pesticide doses. This increases the amount of pesticides that seep into foods that people ingest.

Smallwood noted that growing food with "toxic chemicals, the dominating method, wastes and destroys the soil, which has serious repercussions down the line.

“For every bushel of corn grown conventionally in Iowa, two bushels of soil are lost," he said. "Healthy biological soil sequesters carbon and other greenhouse gases. ... In the long run, growing and eating organically contributes to the wellness of our soil, which is the stomach of the Earth. All the biota, the microscopic life in the soil, that’s where the nutrient exchange takes place, like in our own gut.”

As early as the 60s some people became skeptical of pesticides and demanded research into their potential hazards. Studies trickled in and stacked up to support the skeptics’ concerns. One by one, small-time farmers deserted pesticides for organic methods. This was the birth of the organic farming movement.

At first, only so-called “crunchy, hippie farmers” were growing organic. Organic food is more expensive than non-organic by nature, because, as Smallwood explains, conventional food is priced artificially low, meaning the prices in the grocery store don’t reflect the actual costs.

“What we see from Big Ag, from the chemical [agriculture] industry, is that the profits are privatized, but the losses are made public,” he said. “So when the pesticides and herbicides contaminate the local watersheds, and people and animals get sick, and then those chemicals from Iowa wash into the Gulf of Mexico and create a dead zone where nothing can live. Who pays for that? The public. In economics, that’s called an ‘externality.’ If you were to calculate the costs of those cleanups and add them into the cost of conventional food, there would be no comparison.”

Today, because they do not dominate the market, the price of organics is prohibitive for many. In recent years “organic” has developed a reputation for being an upscale, elitist option—even a luxury good if you ask Fox News.

“What was once considered ‘fringe’ is now being called ‘elitist,’” said Katherine Paul, director of development and communications for the Organic Consumers Association (OCA).

Walmart Organics?

In what it claims is an effort to close this gap and bring organics to all, Walmart has teamed up with Wild Oats to produce super-cheap organic foods. The partners promise to save customers “25 percent or more when comparing Wild Oats to national brand organic products.*

While some food advocacy groups are celebrating the Walmart-Wild Oats partnership, people who know the ins and outs of organic production remain largely skeptical.

Paul says while OCA welcomes the greater distribution of organic produce, they caution against the race to the bottom when it comes to pricing.

“Walmart has a history of driving down price to the lowest in the market,” she said. “This has proven to be not conducive to producing products the right way, or paying fair wages to those who do produce products using high-quality ingredients and processes.”

She said in order for organic farmers to survive, prices for organic produce should reflect what it actually costs to grow and distribute their food.

“We fear that producers, squeezed on price, may resort to substituting high-quality organic ingredients for similar but inferior ingredients, sourced from China, where organic standards are not as rigorous as they are in the US”

Tom Casey, CEO of Wild Oats, says the company will collaborate closely with “a select group of manufacturers who share Wild Oats’ commitment to making organic products available and affordable,” but would not name those manufacturers. He said Wild Oats and Walmart will be able to achieve lower costs by making the supply chain from farmer to consumer more efficient.

“The organic food industry is one of the least efficient product chains. It’s highly fragmented throughout the chain,” he said in an email. “What we’re doing by partnering with Walmart and leveraging their world class distribution is lowering those costs between the farm and consumer. Example: Tomatoes. There are at least five steps involved between the tomato on the farm and the jar of sauce on the shelf. What we’re doing will reduce the cost of those steps and bring the product to consumers at a more affordable price.”

When asked, Casey did not specify which farms would source its food, but said their focus was on sourcing food in the US as much as possible. They would, however, purchase some of the food internationally.

“We select our manufacturers based on their ability to deliver the highest quality standards required by the Wild Oats brand,” he said. “Whenever possible, we source US-based manufacturers; however, in cases where we can’t find a domestic partner able to meet quality standards for a particular product or ingredient, we will look outside of the US. At this time, we only have two international partners – one in Italy (pasta) and one in Canada.”

Smallwood said sourcing food from outside the US could lower the demand from more local organic farming communities.

“[W]e know that whenever Walmart does anything, it has a huge impact,” he said. “So they have the opportunity to do good in a major way. But there is a very good reason that organic prices are higher than conventional food.”

When asked to respond to concerns that their partnership could out-price smaller organic farmers, Casey said only that “it’s too soon to predict the impact on specific farmers.” He insisted their partnership with Walmart is, “overall” a “strongly positive development for organic farming in the US.”

In a Rodale News interview, Todd J. Kluger, vice president of marketing for Lundberg Family Farms, called the idea of cutting organic prices by a quarter a “fantasy.” Mark Kastel, co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute, said Wal-Mart's cost-cutting drive could undermine the ethical values of organic farming.

“If the company ‘Walmart-ed’ organics and approached the industry sector as they do in many business lines, this would be quite destructive,” Kastel said in the Rodale News interview. “One of the ways they lower price and maximize profits is by focusing on imports and relying on giant, industrial organic factory farms. It's not compatible with organics, which is a values-based and ethics-based industry. One of the reasons people are willing to pay more is that they think they're supporting a different ethic, a different animal husbandry model, and that family farmers are being fairly compensated.”

Smallwood encouraged Walmart and Wild Oats to look into the organic food models already in place.

“We hope that Walmart’s goal is to build healthy soil that creates healthy food, and ultimately, healthy people,” he said. “So if that’s what their plan is, that could be good in a very big way. Again, when they do good, they can do a huge amount of good. On behalf of Rodale Institute, we offer our help and guidance to Walmart as they come over to the organic side. We want to welcome them and show them how to do it right.”

April M. Short is an associate editor at AlterNet. Follow her on Twitter @AprilMShort.

Defying repeated threats of a lawsuit from Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), on May 8, Peter Shumlin, Governor of Vermont, signed a historic bill requiring food manufacturers to label genetically engineered (GE) foods, and to drop the practice of labeling GE foods as “natural” or “all natural.”

Defying repeated threats of a lawsuit from Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), on May 8, Peter Shumlin, Governor of Vermont, signed a historic bill requiring food manufacturers to label genetically engineered (GE) foods, and to drop the practice of labeling GE foods as “natural” or “all natural.”

On May 9, true to its word, the GMA confirmed that it will sue Vermont in federal court to overturn H. 112.

Vermont is prepared to fight back. The state has already established a “food fight” legal defense fund. Legal analysts sayVermont will likely win.

Vermont isn’t the only state up against the multi-billion dollar lobbying group. The GMA, whose 300-plus members include Monsanto and Dow, Coca-Cola and General Mills, is pushing a bill in Congress that would preempt all states from passing GMO labeling laws.

It’s time for consumers in every state to band together to defeat the GMA’s full-on assault, not only on Vermont, not only on consumers’ right to know what’s in our food, but on states’ rights and on our basic freedoms to protect our health and our communities.

Here’s how we do it. We boycott every product, including the natural and organic brands, owned by members of the GMA. We flood their Facebook pages, tarnish their brand names. We pressure financial institutions, pension funds and mutual funds to divest from Monsanto and the other GMA companies.

As soon as the GMA files a lawsuit against Vermont, the Organic Consumers Association, joined by a growing coalition of public interest groups, will launch a boycott and divestment campaign directed against all of the 300 GMA companies and their thousands of brand name products—including foods, beverages, seeds, home and garden supplies, pet food, herbicides and pesticides.

A new balance of power

Monsanto and the GMA have until now successfully blocked popular GMO labeling legislation in over 30 states. They’ve defeated, by a razor-thin margin, two high-profile ballot initiatives, in California (2012) and Washington (2013). And they’ve intimidated Connecticut and Maine into including trigger clauses in those states’ GMO labeling laws, successfully delaying their implementation.

Funding for this anti-consumer, anti-right-to-know lobbying and advertising effort topped $100 million in 2012-2014, including $12 million in illegally laundered donations to I-522, the Washington State GMO labeling ballot initiative of 2013. All of that money has come from the 300 chemical, seed, supermarket, grain, pharmaceutical and food corporations, including Monsanto and the other Gene Giants, who make up the GMA.

Until now the GMA colossus has ruled, not only in Washington D.C., but in all 50 states. But now that Vermont has passed a trigger-free GMO labeling law, and Oregon is poised to do the same in November, the balance of power has shifted.

Monsanto, the GMA and their allies are in panic mode. Because they know that when companies are forced to label or remove GMOs, and also are forced to drop the fraudulent practice of labeling GE-tainted foods as “natural” or “all natural,” in one state, they will have to do it in every state. Just as they’ve been forced to do in Europe, where mandatory GMO labeling has been in effect since 1997.

GMA members and corporate agribusiness hate labeling, because it forces them to reveal all of the hazardous GMOs, chemicals and drug residues lurking in the billions of dollars of foods, beverages, seeds, grains and pesticides they sell. It’s no wonder that Monsanto and GMA’s bill in Congress--a bill they’ve named the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2014—has been renamed the “DARK” (Denying Americans the right to know) Act.

Let the boycott begin

We absolutely must defeat the impending GMA lawsuit against Vermont. This will require us to raise money and provide legal help to the state.

Equally important, we need to intensify our mass education, grassroots lobbying and marketplace pressure so we can defeat Monsanto and the GMA Big Food/Chemical lobby in the court of public opinion, too. If you would like to donate to this effort click here.

But there are other ways we can use our dollars to defeat the GMA. We can refuse to invest, even indirectly through retirement and mutual funds, in those companies. We can pressure institutional investors like Fidelity, Vanguard and State Street to dump their stock in these companies.

And we can boycott all of the 300 GMA companies and their more than 6,000 brand name products—including foods, beverages, seeds, home and garden supplies, pet food, herbicides, and pesticides.

Where to start? As part of this Great Boycott, pro-organic consumer groups will put a special emphasis on boycotting the “Traitor Brands,” those organic and so-called “natural” brands owned and marketed by GMA members.

Health-conscious and green-minded consumers often inadvertently support the GMA when they buy brands like Honest Tea, Kashi, Odwalla and others whose parent companies, all members of the GMA, have donated millions to defeat GMO labeling initiatives in California (Prop 37) and Washington State (I-522). (Take the boycott pledge here.)

Because those of us who support organics rarely buy products like Coca-Cola, Diet Pepsi, or Kellogg’s Genetically-Modified-Sugar-Coated Frosted Flakes, or a packet of Monsanto seeds or a spray bottle of Roundup or 2, 4-D. The only way to pressure Big Food and the Gene Giants is to get millions of conscious consumers to boycott the brands we actually buy.

Let’s be clear. Junk Food and beverage companies who are members of the GMA are gobbling up organic and “natural” brands because they recognize the huge profit potential in the fast-growing organic and natural markets. They want our business. If we stop buying their brands, they know there’s a good chance we’ll find alternative brands. And we might never look back.

Seven ways to fight back

There are about 50 popular organic and natural “Traitor Brands” (owned by GMA members). It’s easy for most of us to boycott those brands. But how do we boycott the entire 6,000-product inventory of GMA member-owned brands, especially those of us who don’t shop for those brands in supermarkets?

Here are seven ways to fight back against Monsanto and all the Corporate Bullies of the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

(2) Patronize grocers, coops and community restaurants that serve organic, cooked-from-scratch, local food. Many restaurants, especially chain restaurants (Chipotlé is a rare exception), sell many of the brands owned by GMA members.

(3) Cook at home with healthy organic ingredients.

(4) Buy only heirloom, open-pollinated, and/or organic seeds.

(5) Boycott all lawn and garden inputs (chemicals, fertilizers, etc.) unless they are “OMRI Approved,” which means they are allowed in organic production.

(6) Read the labels on everything you buy. If a GMA member company owns the product, don’t buy it. Given the greed and reckless disregard for public health and the environment typical of GMA corporations, chances are these products aren’t good for you and the environment anyway.

(7) Download the Buycott app for your smartphone and join OCA's new campaign, "Buy Organic Brands that Support Your Right to Know" so you can scan products before you buy them.

In this age of the Internet and social media, consumer boycotts, divestment campaigns and other forms of marketplace pressure are more powerful than ever. Please join and support the Organic Consumers Association’s “Great Boycott” of Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association today. Let’s show Monsanto and the GMA we mean business.

April 24, 2014

The campaign calls for the restructuring of our global food system with the goal of reversing climate change through photosynthesis and biology.

Rodale Institute announced yesterday the launch of a global campaign to generate public awareness of soil’s ability to reverse climate change, but only when the health of the soil is maintained through organic regenerative agriculture. The campaign calls for the restructuring of our global food system with the goal of reversing climate change through photosynthesis and biology.

The white paper states that “We could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions with a switch to widely available and inexpensive organic management practices, which we term ‘regenerative organic agriculture.’”

If management of all current cropland shifted to reflect the regenerative model as practiced at the research sites included in the white paper, more than 40 percent of annual emissions could potentially be captured. If, at the same time, all global pasture was managed to a regenerative model, an additional 71 percent could be sequestered. Essentially, passing the 100 percent mark means a drawing down of excess greenhouse gases, resulting in the reversal of the greenhouse effect.

Regenerative organic agriculture is comprised of organic practices including (at a minimum): cover crops, residue mulching, composting and crop rotation. Conservation tillage, while not yet widely used in organic systems, is a regenerative organic practice integral to soil-carbon sequestration. Other biological farming systems that use some of these techniques include ecological, progressive, natural, pro-soil and carbon farming.

“The purpose of our work is singular; we are working to create a massive awakening,” said “Coach” Mark Smallwood, executive director of Rodale Institute.

“Our founder, J.I. Rodale, had a vision so ambitious that many people wrote him off at the time. Almost 75 years later, the organic movement is exploding with growth and fierce determination. But the stakes are much higher in 2014. J.I. saw that agriculture was heading in a dangerous direction by way of the wide-spread adoption of the use of synthetic chemicals and the industrialization of farming. He attempted to prevent that transition. We no longer have the luxury of prevention. Now we are in the dire situation of needing a cure, a reversal. We know that correcting agriculture is an answer to climate chaos, and that it hinges on human behavior. The massive awakening itself is the cure. The future is underfoot. It’s all about healthy soil.”

The Rodale Institute supports its claims by explaining that if sequestration rates attained by the cases cited inside the white paper were achieved on crop and pastureland across the globe, regenerative agriculture could sequester more than our current annual carbon dioxide emissions. Even if modest assumptions about soil’s carbon sequestration potential are made, regenerative agriculture can easily keep annual emissions to within the desirable range necessary if we are to have a good chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C by 2020.

“The white paper is to encourage new research, new policy and the rapid expansion of regenerative agricultural methods,” said Smallwood.

“The media campaign brings the broader vision to the public much faster. The idea is to stoke the public outcry that already exists and to validate those who demand these changes be made now. By engaging the public now, they build the pressure necessary to prevent this call to action from sitting on the desks of scientists and policy-makers, or worse yet, being buried by businesspeople from the chemical industry. We don’t have time to be polite about it.”

Below are three excerpts exemplifying the call to action set forth in the white paper:

Organically managed soils can convert carbon from a greenhouse gas into a food-producing asset. It’s nothing new, and it’s already happening, but it’s not enough. This is the way we have to farm, period.

There’s a technology for massive planetary geo-engineering that’s tried and tested and available for widespread dissemination right now. It costs little and is adaptable to localities the world over. It can be rolled out tomorrow providing multiple benefits beyond climate stabilization. It’s photosynthesis.

The solution is farming like life on Earth matters; farming in a way that restores and even improves on the natural ability of the microbiology present in healthy soil to hold carbon. This kind of farming is called regenerative organic agriculture and it is the solution to climate change we need to implement today.

Since its founding in 1947 by J.I. Rodale, the Rodale Institute has been committed to groundbreaking research in organic agriculture, advocating for policies that support farmers, and educating people about how organic is the safest, healthiest option for people and the planet. The Rodale Institute is home to the Farming Systems Trial, America’s longest-running side-by-side comparison of chemical and organic agriculture. Consistent results from the study have shown that organic yields match or surpass those of conventional farming. In years of drought, organic corn yields are about 30 percent higher. This year, 2013, marks the 33rd year of the trial. New areas of study at the Rodale Institute include rates of carbon sequestration in chemical versus organic plots, new techniques for weed suppression and organic livestock.

When Lindsey Morris Carpenter was a college student studying art in Philadelphia, she never expected that, just a decade later, she would spend most of her days fixing up tractors, turning piles of manure, and corralling chickens.

Carpenter doesn’t want to be the Whole Foods of farm-to-table produce.

But that’s precisely what she’s doing. Carpenter, 29, dropped out of school in 2004 and returned to her home state of Wisconsin, where she found a job on a vegetable farm. She went on to apprentice at a larger operation in suburban Chicago and eventually secured employment at an urban farm on the city’s south side, teaching previously incarcerated people how to grow food.

By 2007, Carpenter had decided she wanted her own piece of land to farm, so she and her mother, Gail, bought 40 acres in south central Wisconsin and got down to business—an opportunity she's grateful for since she's aware that not everyone has access to the resources that allowed her to purchase this land.

Today, Carpenter’s certified-organic operation, Grassroots Farm, grows fruit, vegetables, hops, and herbs; she also sells pesticide-free cut flowers and eggs from the farm’s chickens. Being as environmentally sustainable as possible is paramount to Grassroots’ operations, Carpenter says. So, too, is a commitment to provide healthy, fresh food to local people regardless of the size of their bank accounts.

“One of my biggest priorities is affordability,” Carpenter said. She doesn’t want to be the Whole Foods of farm-to-table produce. To that end, she designed her community supported agriculture program to be relatively affordable. She charges only $25 a week for a box of produce, which she offers 16 weeks out of the year.

Carpenter’s been in business for five years and has struggled to make a living; she estimates her take-home income at $1.75 an hour. And while it’s been “shockingly easy” to get support from her neighbors, they’re also “sketched out” by her tattoos, short hair, and unmarried status.

Carpenter is one of America’s new and growing class of women farmers. Her focus on sustainability and social justice represent part of the promise women bring to the sector, while the difficulties she faces demonstrate some of the challenges that stand in their way. Many of those challenges are shared by Carpenter’s male counterparts: inclement weather, insects, weeds, erratic markets, soil erosion, droughts, labor shortages, urbanization, and the expense of sustainable methods that don’t rely on toxic chemicals or machines dependent on fossil fuels. But additional burdens often fall on women farmers, such as childrearing or caring for aging parents.

Luckily, women farmers from earlier generations have built institutions designed to help newcomers. And Denise O’Brien, a farmer from southwest Iowa, has done more than her share.

As times got rough, in many cases it was the farmers' wives who kept the operations going.

O’Brien and her husband, Larry Harris, decided they would grow organically when they first started farming in 1976. They were inspired by the first Earth Day in 1970, she says, and the many environmental issues making headlines in the mid-1970s. She talks about organic agriculture in classic environmental terms of doing no harm and leaving the earth in better shape than how you found it.

But the decision to go organic left the couple feeling isolated from local farmers, who mostly grew corn, soybeans, and hay on conventional farms. No networks existed to provide support to farmers who wanted to do things differently.

“When we started farming, we couldn’t even say the ‘O-word’ out loud,”O’Brien said, laughing. “But we’re out now.”

By the mid-1980s, O’Brien and Harris had started an informal network called the Progressive Prairie Alliance. Ten years later, she’d helped to build several organizations that helped farmers work more sustainably and cooperatively, but hadn’t yet done anything specifically to help other women farmers. That changed in 1995, when O’Brien, then president of the National Family Farm Coalition, was asked to give a presentation at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

O’Brien went searching for case studies on American women working in agriculture, but couldn’t find many. She had readThe Invisible Farmers: Women in Agricultural Production, a book by Carolyn E. Sachs about women in the industry. She also had her own personal experience to go on—she had lived through the farm crisis of the 1980s when an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 farmers faced financial failure as land and commodity values boomed and busted, interest rates skyrocketed, and thousands went bankrupt.

As some farmers sunk into depression, O’Brien says that in many cases their wives were the ones who kept the operations going. She believed the landscape of industrial agriculture would change as more women farmers became decision makers, and suspected their role would only grow.

What the numbers show

She was right. The number of women who were named as the principal operator of an American farm or ranch increased by nearly 30 percent between 2002 and 2007, according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture. Women composed about 14 percent of principal farm operators in 2007, and that percentage has held steady since then, according to the preliminary 2012 census released in February.

However, that jump may have more to do with what was happening in the census than on the farm. The form used in the 2007 census was the first to allow two primary operators to be listed—so wives now had a place to be named alongside their husbands. The full 2012 census will be released later this spring with data on women as a percentage of all operators, not just the principal ones; in 2007 women made up 30 percent of all farmers.

Part of the picture is that both men and women are leaving the profession, but women are leaving less quickly. The total number of farms in the United States declined by about 5 percent to 2.1 million from 2007 to 2012, with nearly all of those losses concentrated among smaller farms of less than 1,000 acres in size.

And women-operated farms are generally smaller and less profitable than others, according to the new census data. Seventy-five percent of American farms grossed less than $50,000 in 2012; for farms with a female principal operator that figure was 91 percent. About 69 percent of U.S. farms were smaller than 180 acres in size; for farms with a female principal operator that figure was 82 percent.

But it’s not just a picture of women farmers barely scraping by. Census data from 2007 showed that women were more likely than men to operate farms with a diversity of crops, and to own a greater percentage of the land they farmed. Women farmers also tended to sell food directly to the consumer rather than to large food-processing corporations—an approach that the United Nations report has found to be important for improving food systems.

Leigh Adcock, executive director of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, said she believes the U.S. food system will be healthier when more women farm.

Growing institutions

Last November, more than 400 women from 20 states and four countries assembled in Des Moines, Iowa, for the fourth conference hosted by the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, a nonprofit organization that O'Brien founded in 1997.

"When portions of the population are left out of things then you’re not hearing the whole picture."

WFAN’s mission is to “link and empower women to build food systems and communities that are healthy, just, sustainable, and that promote environmental integrity.” The group encompasses all sorts of women: some who caught the farming bug after careers in other sectors, widows who inherited land, and some who work side-by-side with their partner.

The network has been expanding its ranks to provide much-needed camaraderie for women working in a male-dominated field and education on how to lead the sustainable farming movement. This year’s conference included sessions on marketing, soil health, cooperatives, research and grants, pricing, pesticide drift, and wildlife and watershed management. Sustainability was a common theme.

The network has grown from 300 members in 2008 to more than 4,000 today, which suggests women in sustainable agriculture aren’t going away anytime soon. But whether more women means an improved food system is a question that must be answered with evidence, O’Brien said. For now, she’s just trying to get women farmers a seat at the table.

“I believe in my heart of hearts that when portions of the population are left out of things then you’re not hearing the whole picture,” she said.

California produce in Iowa's farm country?

Being involved with the Women, Food and Agriculture Network has given Iowan farmer Ellen Walsh-Rosmann an outlet for her message that farmers need to make their voices heard on legislation related to food and agriculture. She has hosted politicians at her in-laws’ farm and has lobbied in Washington, D.C.

“We live in Iowa,” she thought. “What’s going on here?”

“[Lobbying trips] made me realize this is not an intimidating system,” she said. “These people are just like us and they come from where we live, they know the same people we know … but we as constituents can really inform them and tell them those stories and update them on the current situation. That’s what our job needs to be.”

Walsh­-Rosmann moved with her husband to the small city of Harlan during the month of September, a good time for local food. But when shopping at the grocery store for the first time, she discovered only produce grown in California and wrapped in plastic.

When she and her husband started Pin Oak Place, a 10-acre farmstead, in 2010, they were adamant they would focus on nourishing their community with fresh, healthy, organically grown vegetables and certified-organic eggs. The time she’d spent at Iowa State University studying the social, political, and economic forces that affect agriculture cemented this mission.

But putting her mission into practice has been a challenge.

“I was doing the local farmers market in my town and I was basically giving food away,” she said, meaning they couldn’t make a profit. The farmers have shifted their business operations to focus on wholesale, targeting nearby Omaha, Neb., and its much larger population.

Between raising her son, dealing with her own health problems, and struggling to build a profitable business based in sustainable farming, life has become a balancing act for Walsh-Rosmann. Her network of other women farmers provides invaluable support.

Sena Christian wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Sena is a newspaper reporter in Roseville, Calif., with a passion for social justice and indoor soccer.

April 11, 2014

Corn is the staple of the US agricultural system and food supply. It's in everything we eat unbeknownst to many Americans. Corn feeds steers that become steak and fast food hamburgers. Corn feeds chickens and pigs - even catfish, salmon and tilapia. Milk, cheese and yogurt that once came from cows that grazed on grass now come from Holsteins that spend their time tethered to milking machines while munching on corn. Processed foods contain even more corn than so-called "natural" foods. Take chicken nuggets, for example. Not only the chicken itself but the corn starch that holds it together, the corn flour in the batter, the corn oil in which its fried, the leavenings and lecithin, the mono-, di- and triglycerides, the golden coloring, the citric acid that keeps it fresh - all these ingredients come from corn.

Any soft drink in the supermarket including Coke and Pepsi contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) so you can wash down your corn with some more corn. A quarter of the 45,000 items in the average supermarket contain corn. Corn's derivatives are used in all processed foods, derivatives such as corn oil, corn starch, maltodextrin, xanthan gum, ascorbic acid, ethel acetate, acetic acid and vanilla extract. When broken down, derivatives of corn get used as a food filler, texturizer, emulsifier, sweetener, preservative, adhesive and many other applications. Government agricultural policies makes corn so cheap that food manufacturers earmark large budgets for research and development to invent infinite ways to push corn into more products. And corn is not only used as a food. It is used in gasoline production (ethanol), construction materials, adhesives, paper products, disposable diapers, trash bags, batteries and charcoal briquettes as well.

Why is corn so ubiquitous in the American diet? The main reason is that it's super cheap and this is mainly a result of government policy. For hundreds of miles in the midwest corn is the only crop grown. Farm after farm are devoted to this monoculture. America produces 300 million tons of number 2 corn each year. This isn't the kind of corn you eat when you eat corn on the cob. This is the kind that is primarily fed to beef cows, chickens and pigs.

It wasn't always so. Farms used to plant several crops and were home to multiple animals. No longer. Why this change from polyculture to monoculture? Credit Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill, the two mega corporations of US agribusiness. US government agricultural policies, lobbied for by these giant agricultural corporations, have resulted in corn being the cheapest agricultural commodity out there. Government subsidies, provided thanks to the taxpayers, push the price of corn way below the level that would have been set by the law of supply and demand.

Way back in the 1930s farmers were paid not to grow corn when supply exceeded demand thereby keeping supply and demand in balance and the price paid for a bushel of corn up. The Agricultural Adjustment Act was a United States federal law of the New Deal era which reduced agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land. Its purpose was to reduce crop surplus and, therefore, effectively raise the value of crops. But during the Nixon administration farm policies were rejiggered to increase production and drive down prices.

The 1973 farm bill began replacing the New Deal policy of supporting prices through loans, government purchases and land idling with a system of direct payments to farmers. Farmers were encouraged to sell as much production as they could at any price, no matter how low, because the government (taxpayers) would make up the difference. Corn production skyrocketed much to the approval of large agribusiness corporations like ADM, Cargill and Monsanto which engineered GMO seeds that could be sprayed with their Roundup herbicide. But lower profit margins forced the smaller farmers into bankruptcy. Farmers were forced to maximize the number of bushels their farms could produce per acre. The only way to do this was to use GMO corn (bought from Monsanto), huge tractors and combines and huge quantities of pesticides (also bought from Monsanto).

It became economically expedient to concentrate animals in large feeding pens where they were fed a diet of corn. Corn is fed to beef cows although they evolved to eat grass. Feeding them corn actually makes them sick, and, in order to prevent this, they are fed a dose of hormones and antibiotics with their daily allotment of corn. Corn subsidies have been largely responsible for this change.

Author Michael Pollan's recent book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, suggests that corn subsidies in particular have led to the success of the feedlots or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) that he and journalist Eric Schlosser have blamed for the emergence of e. coli as a major health concern. Subsidized corn is so inexpensive that beef companies find it profitable to build large facilities to feed corn to their cattle. Cows do not normally live in enclosed areas or consume corn, so these CAFOs generate large amounts of waste and require antibiotics and other drugs to keep the animals healthy.

From agribusiness' point of view, a cow is simply a vehicle for converting plant material to protein and the point is to get the cow to maximum weight in the shortest period of time. In other words the game is to minimize the time to slaughter for these animals. The same applies to chickens, turkeys and hogs. This maximizes profits. Corn does a better job of speeding up this process than does grass. Corn can be commodified and stored; grass can't. Cheap corn made beef and in particular fast food hamburgers cheap. Those cheap hamburgers are actually subsidized by American taxpayers with the subsidies paid to farmers.

As a reaction to the inhumane treatment of animals in CAFOs and the unhealthiness of chicken and beef provided by animals brought to maturity in these confining conditions where they literally tromp around in their own excrement day after day, the organic movement has taken hold. Cow excrement which used to be spread on fields by manure spreaders on small family farms and which provided healthy nutrients back to the soil is now so toxic due to the corn fed diet that it can't be used as fertilizer and is placed in lagoons where it languishes much like spent nuclear fuel. In both cases there is nothing that can be done with the toxic sludge except to store it in perpetuity. Only there have been burst dams and the resultant toxic sludge has oozed into streams and rivers.

Organic food has also caught the attention of big food producers whose lobbying has shaped the US organic food laws to their benefit. What is considered organic has been defined as loosely as possible. The result is that instead of what the consumer visualizes as a bucolic family farm with happy chickens scratching for worms has instead become big business with CAFOs similar to nonorganic food production. The only difference is that the chickens must be fed organic chicken feed i.e. there can be no chemical additives, hormones or antibiotics in the feed. In order to qualify as free range, the chickens must have the possibility of going outside on some grass. So the large feeding pens have a little door which the chickens can go out and romp around on a fifteen foot strip of grass but only for a short time before they are slaughtered. Most chickens acclimated to the large enclosed pens don't even bother, but they can be marketed as "free range chickens."

Big Organic food production is hardly the small family farm that most people envision. It turns out that there's organic and then there's ... organic. Large scale operations have invaded the organic industry. They operate much like non-organic food industries. In many cases they are one and the same. Take Horizon milk, for instance. I have been drinking Horizon organic milk for a couple of years. I was sort of amazed to see it pop up at Food 4 Less and even, recently, at Wal-Mart. I should have suspected that this was a really huge operation, but until I started researching this article, I didn't realize how huge. It turns out that Horizon is just another brand of Dean Foods:

Dean Foods is by far the largest U.S. dairy processor. According to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Dean processes 40 percent of fluid milk consumed in the U.S., which it distributes in a dizzying array of brands. Its dominance extends to organic milk, too — Dean’s Horizon brand is the largest supplier of organic milk.

Like a lot of Big Organic food suppliers, Horizon is pushing the limits of the meaning of "organic." The Cornucopia Institute has a dispute going with Horizon over the illegal practice of bringing conventional heifers onto organic farms. These heifers are then converted to organic although they haven't been raised to organic standards up till then.

Conventional replacement dairy calves, typically bought at auctions, likely receive antibiotics, toxic insecticides and parasiticides as well as conventional feed during their first year of life before being “converted” to organics—all practices strictly prohibited in organic production.

Demonstrably lower levels of stress, superior health and improved vitality of the cows separates authentic organic dairy farms from factory farms masquerading as organic, according to the farm policy research group.

“In the factory farm model, the animals are pushed for such high production that, just like in the conventional confinement model, after as few as 1 to 2 years, they are so sick, or they are not healthy enough to breed, that they are slaughtered,” Kastel clarified. “Organic cows are generally so healthy, and live such long lives, that many of the baby calves born can be sold to other farmers, creating an alternative revenue stream for organic farmers.”

The fact that large scale organic farms use the same CAFOs as do the large scale conventional farms explains a lot why there is as much e. coli found in organic food as there is in non-organic food. In both cases animals are concentrated together and live out their days in their own excrement. Only difference is that "organic" cows and chickens are fed organic feed (supposedly) and no antibiotics or hormones. Because of living conditions, organic CAFOs will result in more sick animals even than conventional CAFOs which at least have the advantage of antibiotics.

Another issue with organic produce is that it is allowed into the country from foreign countries as long as it was produced according to organic standards. Of course there is little or no enforcement mechanism to ensure that organic vegetables and fruits from abroad adhere to the highest standards.

Many might think that the issue of food production has nothing to do with climate change, but they would be wrong. Grassing over the huge number of acres now devoted to corn in order to feed ruminants (cows) would in fact do a lot to offset fossil fuel emissions. If the 16 million acres now used to grow corn in the US were converted to pasture, 14 billion pounds of carbon would be removed from the atmosphere by the grasses and put into the soil as enrichment, the equivalent of taking 4 million cars off the road. Cows, and, therefore, humans, would be so much healthier. As much as one third of the greenhouse gasses that human activity has added to the atmosphere can be attributed to food production and transport. Locally grown would reduce the GHGs produced from transporting food all over the world.

In another article I will spell out the differences in more detail between the Big Organic food producers and the local small family operations of real organic farms which are not only organic according to the letter of the law but in the spirit of true organic farming as well.

June 12, 2013

The latest example of how even health-conscious eaters are not immune from foodborne illness outbreaks came last week with a recall of organic frozen berries contaminated with Hepatitis A. The products were sold under the brand name of Townsend Farms at two large chains: Costco stores in the west and Harris Teeter stores.

The latest count from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention is 87 people infected in eight states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and (Photo:Fried Dough/Flickr)Washington. Of these, 36 have been hospitalized.

According to the CDC, Hepatitis A “usually occurs when an infected food handler prepares food without appropriate hand hygiene.” However, the source of this particular strain is still unclear, except that it probably did not originate in the U.S.

This outbreak raises several important questions about our food system.

Are Companies Duping Consumers with “Farm-washing”?

According to the fine print on the back label, shown on food safety attorney Bill Marler’s blog, the fruit came from around the world: Chile, Argentina and Turkey. The pomegranate seeds processed in Turkey appear to be the culprit.

But you couldn’t tell the international origins from the front of the packaging labeled “Organic Antioxidant Blend,” with the bucolic image of Townsend Farms and its warm and fuzzy tag line: “Since 1906, Field to Farm to Family.”

It seems at least one victim of the outbreak was fooled by the imagery. According to CBS News, Geoff Soza of California ate “a healthy breakfast of thawed frozen berries and Greek yogurt every morning” but while “celebrating his 30th wedding anniversary in Yellowstone National Park,” the 64-year-old wound up in the hospital instead. At one point, things looked so serious that the words “liver transplant” were uttered by a doctor.

Soza seemed shocked to learn his favorite berries were not from the Oregon farm depicted on the packaging. According to the story:

Healthy and health-conscious, the Sozas always inspect their foods and select organic produce. They were surprised to learn that some of the fruit from Townsend Farms of Fairview, OR, was from outside the U.S. But the packaging convinced the Sozas the fruit was all-American because it bears the slogans “Grower. Processor. Distributor.” and “Field to Farm to Family, since 1906.”

Soza’s wife put it plainly: “It was our distinct impression that these are raised under U.S. standards, especially organic food standards.”

I asked Mark Kastel, co-founder of The Cornucopia Institute, if he thought the Townsend label was confusing as to the product’s origins.

“Yes, it’s deliberately deceptive, to make you think you’re buying local fruit from the farm up the road,” Kastel said. “There are many examples of this. Often companies with the word ‘farm’ in their name don’t even do any growing themselves, they just contract with farms, sometimes from all over the world. Or they just buy from brokers in the farms or an anonymous source.”

How does this connect to food safety risks? While small, local farms are not immune, the difference is in the magnitude of the impact: with a small farm, any adverse impacts are only felt locally, but with globalization, the potential hazards are spread far and wide, and to a much larger population.

Also, about the antioxidant claim on the package, registered dietitian Andy Bellatti says, “All whole, plant-based foods contain antioxidants. So, any combination of fruit can be ‘an antioxidant blend’ and what matters most is diversity of antioxidants, not just from berries.”

Can We Trust Organic Labels on Imported Foods?

Among the most frequent questions I get regarding organic is “what about imported food; can we trust the standards in other countries?” The Townsend berries sport the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic seal, indicating that even though the mix contains imported fruit, it still conforms to the high U.S. based organic standards.

Townsend Farms products are certified as organic by both Oregon Tilth, a private third party certifier, and the Washington State Department of Agriculture. But how is it that berries grown in Turkey, Chile and Mexico can get packaged in Oregon and certified as organic by the standards of the U.S. Department of Agriculture?

The short answer to that question lies in the fact that firms worldwide have the ability to certify farms according to the standards set forth by the USDA. As long as a proper authority can verify a farm operates according to organic standards once a year, that farm can become USDA-certified organic whether it’s outside Indianapolis or Istanbul.

OK, but can we trust these foreign certifiers? Some watchdog groups such as Center for Food Safety and Cornucopia Institute have greater confidence in U.S. farms and U.S. organic certification than from imports. These groups and many others have grave reservations about particular countries with an increasing presence in the U.S., particularly China and India.

How Many Sick People Will it Take to Get Feds to Act?

Most importantly, this serious outbreak underscores once again, how the stalled food safety regulations, as mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act (enacted in 2011), are adversely impacting public health.

But the required regulations for how these preventive measures would be implemented have been overdue for more than a year now. In April, a federal court agreed with the Center for Food Safety’s lawsuit that the FDA has failed to adhere to statutory deadlines for final regulations.

The judge ordered the FDA to work with Center for Food Safety to submit a new timeline for the rules, which the court would then require FDA to follow. George Kimbrell, senior attorney with Center for Food Safety, says this process is currently underway, which is the good news:

Congress required the FDA to dramatically improve import safety. The firm, timely deadlines for new import regulations underscored how overdue and urgently-needed the improvements are. The court should soon set new deadlines for the regulations, and the FDA will finally do the job Congress required of it and protect the American public from continued outbreaks.

The bad news is that while the FDA continues to drag its feet, Americans continue to get sick. Whether it’s Hepatitis A in imported berries, listeria in imported cheese or salmonella in imported papayas, our regulators have a lot more work to do to safeguard the food supply. Let’s hope it won’t take more illnesses to get them to take action.

January 09, 2013

In an article entitled "Canada's Organic Nightmare" put out by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, authors Mischa Popoff and Patrick Moore contend that many foods labeled as USDA organic may not actually be up to that standard because there is a lack of field testing in Canada, and, furthermore, free trade agreements allow the importation of such foods into the US. There are also "organic equivalency" agreements with other countries that allow imported organic food to be considered as equivalent to that grown in Canada. Popoff and Moore contend that organic crops and livestock are not tested in Canada before they are certified thus making certification essentially meaningless. Inspections consist of checking out the records at organic farms to see if the paperwork is in order, but the actual products are not tested making it more likely that the records could be falsified.

US standards for organic certification do call for field testing of crops and livestock to make sure that they do not exceed well-defined limits of pesticides and herbicides. On both sides of the border GMOs are prohibited in order to qualify for the organic label. While the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) goes to great lengths to make sure that regular supermarket non-organic food is safe and conforms to all labelling claims, pulling food from store shelves and inspecting it before it leaves the farm, organic foods are not so rigorously tested. Mischoff and Popoff claim that the lack of organic food field testing is the result of lobbying efforts by the global environmental movement, but perhaps corporate farmers wishing to enter the lucrative organic market are the real culprits here. They make the point that regular supermarket food should not be criticised as containing undesirable chemicals if organic foods have to rely, more or less, on farmers' vouching for the purity of their products.

I'm not so sure that this logic holds. If Canadian organic products (which have been found to contain herbicides and pesticides) cannot be completely trusted, it does not follow that people should trust supermarket foods not to cause harm. What should happen is that Canadians should demand rigorous field testing of their organic products just as they test other products in the food chain to ensure that Canadians (and citizens of other countries they export to) are getting certifiable organic products. The US should demand the same before they accept imported Canadian products and give them the USDA organic label.

According to the CFIA’s definition of organic foods, there is no mention of safety, purity, nutrition or sustainability criteria that are all readily and inexpensively verifiable through basic lab testing. Instead, "organic product" in Canada is legally defined as product “that has been certified as organic.” According to the CFIA's own regulations, organic food can only be decertified if it's pesticide level does not even meet the limits imposed for non-organic foods. The authors contend that Canada will become a backdoor for the importation of non-organic food under the organic label since large corporations realize that there is a lot of money to be made in this high end market, and there is even more money to be made if organic standards are allowed to be debauched.

Why does Canada allow such haphazard and potentially dangerous practices to continue? The authors claim that organic farmers want organic certification so they can claim their foods are organic and, therefore, charge more for their products without having the scientific scrutiny that would actually prove that their products truly meet organic standards. And there is money involved since the private CFIA certifiers are paid by the farmers themselves as they are in the US. So the farmers get what they want - lax standards - and the CFIA certifiers get what they want - a lucrative profession. There likely is collusion between the two entities amounting quite possibly to the level of fraud.

The organic industry in Canada is a $2 billion a year industry. It is sufficiently mature that it could support a better testing standard which would not be prohibitively expensive. The Canadian standard continues to put more emphasis on bureaucratic paperwork than on scientific analysis and this is the way the big players in the organic industry want it. They can reliably fill out the paperwork at little cost to themselves. Growing truly organic food products would not only be an inconvenience to them but might possibly detract from the bottom line. This is a problem not only in Canada but also in the US where big corporations entering the organic industry seek to lower organic standards in order to cut costs.

Under the same lax regulations Canada doles out the "certifiably organic" label to other countries for use on their imports into Canada. So Canadians are faced with the prospect of consuming foods that originated in other countries having the Canadian organic label and consuming them as if they were grown in Canada. This back door into Canada also permits these products to be reimported into the US as if they were Canadian certifiable organic products.

"This article covers a report that is an untruthful and indefensible indictment of Canada’s organic farmers and business people, who take great pride in providing consumers with a complete seed-to-fork system premised on integrity, traceability and transparency.

Canada’s organic food system must meet all food safety and regulatory requirements, including random testing for chemical residue. Testing is, and always has been, one of the many enforcement and inspection mechanisms available during surprise spot-checks or when an inspector determines that testing is merited. Organic farmers and processors undergo mandatory annual third-party audits and site inspections.

"The authors of the Frontier Centre report are well-established opponents of organic, vocal in their support of GMOs, who have produced a heavily biased document. We are shocked by the media attention this has received, which is obviously intended to generate controversy where none exists.

"Organic products have been proven through numerous peer-reviewed studies to contain significantly less pesticides and pesticide residues, in an environment already contaminated from years of toxic pollution. Organic farmers and businesses are working hard to reverse this trend and to create an alternative system to conventional agriculture. GMOs, artificial preservatives and colouring are not allowed in organic production."

However, they don't claim that regular field testing is required, but is at the discretion of the certifier. Their statement that organic products have proven to contain "significantly less pesticides" suggests that they still might not be up to organic standards, just that they have less pesticides than regular supermarket foods. They also suggest that, while they are doing the best they can, the environment has been "already contaminated from years of toxic pollution." However, this seems like more of an excuse or a rationale for not meeting organic standards. It's an organic farmer's and certifier's responsibilty to ensure that foods labeled organic in fact are up to organic standards not just that the farmer has tried hard to meet those standards.

In addition to testing for the prescence of pesticides and herbicides organic products should be tested for the prescence of pathogens which would crop up if manure, for example, were to be improperly composted. This is not even on the organic industry's radar yet and explains why even some products labeled "organic" in the US have contained e coli and other pathogens and have caused health problems among consumers.

Suffice it to say that standards for organic foods are mind bogglingly lax, especially in Canada. Since Canada has a free trade agreement with the US for the importation of organic foods, these foods from Canada and imports into Canada from other countries can wind up on US store shelves labeled organic. While consumers pay a premium for organic foods, are they really getting what they pay for? God only knows. Standards need to be upgraded in both Canada and the US. The incentive for collusion between farmers and certifiers needs to be eliminated, and field testing needs to be rigorously enforced or, in the case of Canada, instituted.

October 20, 2012

The $36 million No on 37 campaign, bankrolled by $20 million from the world's six largest pesticide companies, has been caught in yet another lie, this time possibly criminal.

These companies and their allies in the junk food industry know that their profit margins may suffer if consumers have a choice whether to purchase genetically engineered foods or not. And that's why opponents are spending nearly a million dollars per day trying to make Prop 37 complicated. But really it's simple - we have the right to know what's in our food.

To date, the No on 37 campaign has been able to repeat one lie after another with near impunity. But has this pattern of deceit finally caught up to it?

Yesterday, the Yes on 37 campaign sent letters to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting a criminal investigation of the No on 37 campaign for possible fraudulent misuse of the official seal of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The No on 37 campaign affixed the FDA's seal to one of the campaign's mailers. Section 506 of the U.S. Criminal Code states: "Whoever...knowingly uses, affixes, or impresses any such fraudulently made, forged, counterfeited, mutilated, or altered seal or facsimile thereof to or upon any certificate, instrument, commission, document, or paper of any description...shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both."

The letter also provides evidence that the No on 37 campaign falsely attributed a direct quote to the FDA in the campaign mailer. Alongside the FDA seal, the mailer includes this text in quotes. "The US Food and Drug Administration says a labeling policy like Prop 37 would be 'inherently misleading." The quote is entirely fabricated. The FDA did not make this statement and does not take a position on Prop 37.

In addition, the three identified authors of the "Rebuttal to Argument in Favor of Proposition 37" include a Dr. Henry I. Miller, who is identified solely as "Founding Director, Office of Biotechnology of the Food & Drug Administration." Dr. Miller in fact, does not currently work for the FDA in any capacity - as millions of California voters have been erroneously led to believe.

This is not the first blatant act of deception that the No on 37 campaign has been caught perpetrating on the citizens of California - particularly relating to their "top scientist" Dr. Henry Miller.

Consider Miller's growing "rap sheet":

• On Oct. 4 the No on 37 campaign was forced to pull its first ad off the air and re-shoot it after they were caught misrepresenting Miller as a doctor at Stanford University when he is actually a researcher at the Hoover Institute on Stanford's campus, as the Los Angeles Times reported.• Last week, the campaign was reprimanded by Stanford again for misrepresenting the university in a mailer that went out to millions of voters. And this week, the campaign was caught sending out yet another deceptive mailer involving the University.

This is the man the No on 37 campaign has portrayed to voters as an arbiter of good science and promoted as an expert worthy of our trust. In reality, Miller is nothing more than a corporate shill that will say whatever his paymasters ask him to, be it Exxon, Phillip Morris, Monsanto, or DuPont.

Does the No on 37 campaign stand behind Miller's fringe views on tobacco, climate change, nuclear radiation and DDT?

But this pattern of deceit doesn't end with Miller:

• On Oct. 5, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the nation's largest professional association for nutritionists and dieticians, accused the No on 37 campaign of misrepresenting its position and misleading voters in the official California Voter's Guide that went to 11 million voters.• And the anti-Proposition 37 ads that are now blanketing the state have been described as misleading by the San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee, and San Francisco Chronicle.

Who should we trust when it comes to our right to know what's in the food we eat: Monsanto, DuPont, and Henry Miller or the millions of California consumers and leading consumer, health, women's, faith-based, labor and other groups; 61 countries that already require GMO labeling; and a growing stack of peer-reviewed research linking genetically engineered foods to health and environmental problems?

September 15, 2012

I first heard about a new Stanford "study" downplaying the value of organics when this blog headline cried out from my inbox: "Expensive organic food isn't healthier and no safer than produce grown with pesticides, finds biggest study of its kind."

What?

Does the actual study say this?

No, but authors of the study -- "Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier Than Conventional Alternatives? A Systematic Review" -- surely are responsible for its misinterpretation and more. Their study actually reports that ¨Consumption of organic foods may reduce exposure to pesticide residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria."

In any case, the Stanford report's unorthodox measure "makes little practical or clinical sense," notes Charles Benbrook -- formerly Executive Director, Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences: What people "should be concerned about [is]... not just the number of [pesticide] residues they are exposed to" but the "health risk they face." Benbrook notes "a 94% reduction in health risk" from pesticides when eating organic foods.

Assessing pesticide-driven health risks weighs the toxicity of the particular pesticide. For example the widely-used pesticide atrazine, banned in Europe, is known to be "a risk factor in endocrine disruption in wildlife and reproductive cancers in laboratory rodents and humans."

"Very few studies" included by the Stanford researchers, notes Benbrook, "are designed or conducted in a way that could isolate the impact or contribution of a switch to organic food from the many other factors that influence a given individual's health." They "would be very expensive, and to date, none have been carried out in the U.S." [emphasis added].

In other words, simple prudence should have prevented these scientists from using "evidence" not designed to capture what they wanted to know.

Moreover, buried in the Stanford study is this all-critical fact: It includes no long-term studies of people consuming organic compared to chemically produced food: The studies included ranged from just two days to two years. Yet, it is well established that chemical exposure often takes decades to show up, for example, in cancer or neurological disorders.

Consider these studies not included: The New York Times notes three 2011 studies by scientists at Columbia University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan that studied pregnant women exposed to higher amounts of an organophosphate pesticide. Once their children reached elementary school they "had, on average, I.Q.'s several points lower than those of their peers."

Thus, it is reprehensible for the authors of this overview to even leave open to possible interpretation that their compilation of short-term studies can determine anything about the human-health impact of pesticides.

What also disturbs me is that neither in their journal article nor in media interviews do the Stanford authors suggest that concern about "safer and healthier" might extend beyond consumers to the people who grow our food. They have health concerns, too!

Many choose organic to decrease chemicals in food production because of the horrific consequences farm workers and farmers suffer from pesticide exposure. U.S. farming communities are shown to be afflicted with, for example, higher rates of: "leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and soft tissue sarcoma" -- in addition to skin, lip, stomach, brain and prostate cancers," reports the National Cancer Institute. And, at a global level, "an estimated 3 million acute pesticide poisonings occur worldwide each year," reports the World Health Organization. Another health hazard of pesticides, not hinted at in the report, comes from water contamination by pesticides. They have made the water supply for 4.3 million Americans unsafe for drinking.

Finally, are organic foods more nutritious?

In their report, Crystal Smith-Spangler, MD, and co-authors say only that "published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods." Yet, the most comprehensive meta-analysis comparing organic and non-organic, led by scientist Kirsten Brandt, a Scientist at the Human Nutrition Research Center at the UK's Newcastle University found organic fruits and vegetables, to have on "average 12% higher nutrient levels."

Bottom line for me? What we do know is that the rates of critical illnesses, many food-related --from allergies to Crohn's Disease -- are spiking and no one knows why. What we do know is that pesticide poisoning is real and lethal -- and not just for humans. In such a world is it not the height of irresponsibility to downplay the risks of exposure to known toxins?

Rachel Carson would be crying. Or, I hope, shouting until -- finally -- we all listen. "Simple precaution! Is that not commonsense?"

A study released last week by Stanford scientists, which claims organic foods are no more healthy than non-organic foods, was funded by corporate agriculture and biotechnology giants, according to a new report by the Cornucopia Institute.

Organic produce (Photo: Flickr/ penelope waits / Creative Commons License) "We were not one bit surprised to find that the agribusiness giant Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural business enterprise, and foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which have deep ties to agricultural chemical and biotechnology corporations like Monsanto, have donated millions to Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, where some of the scientists who published this study are affiliates and fellows," said Charlotte Vallaeys, Food and Farm Policy Director at the Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit organic farm policy organization.

On September 3, Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, released the research, garnishing widespread press coverage from corporate news outlets such as the New York Times, Associated Press, and CBS News. As the New York Timesreported, the study "concluded that fruits and vegetables labeled organic were, on average, no more nutritious than their conventional counterparts, which tend to be far less expensive."

However, as Cornucopia points out, a deeper examination of the actual research reveals "glaring errors, both in understanding the important and complex differences between organic and conventional foods and in the researchers’ flawed choice of research methods."

Environmental health advocates such as the Environmental Working Group and Mark Kastel of Cornucopia have been quick to point out the wealth of research ignored in the Stanford report, which reveals the obvious risks involved in producing and consuming non-organics; however, Stanford's spin was quickly and widely accepted by journalists without fact-checking and was rushed to the pages of major news outlets.

Now Cornucopia has revealed that the Stanford researchers have direct ties to big ag players, which stand to profit from an organics smear campaign.

"Make no mistake, the Stanford organics study is a fraud," says Mike Adams of Naturalnews.com and Anthony Gucciardi of Naturalsociety.org. "To say that conventional foods are safe is like saying that cigarettes are safe. Both can be propagandized with fraudulent science funded by corporate donations to universities, and we’re seeing the same scientist who helped Big Tobacco now helping Big Biotech in their attempt to defraud the public."

"There was just no way that truly independent scientists with the expertise required to adequately answer such an important question would ignore the vast and growing body of scientific literature pointing to serious health risks from eating foods produced with synthetic chemicals," says Vallaeys.

Additionally, the study did, in fact, concede a few positive attributes to organic foods, including the fact that organic produce has fewer pesticide residues; however, such facts were buried in the presentation of the research by the Stanford researchers and public relations staff and were not widely reported by major news sources.

August 27, 2012

The battle in California over Proposition 37, which would require labeling of foods containing GMOs, is really heating up. Millions of dollars are already being poured into the opposition campaign, with much of it going to former Big Tobacco shills.

Over at GMO HQ, Monsanto recently posted this missive called "Taking a Stand: Proposition 37, The California Labeling Proposal," in which the biotech giant explains why it is opposing the measure (to the tune of $4.2 million so far).

Even for a corporation not exactly known for its honesty and transparency, this brief webpage is riddled with deception and outright falsehoods about the initiative and its proponents. Here are the 10 most blatant examples:

1) The law "would require a warning label on food products."

No warning label would be required. Rather, the words "partially produced with genetic engineering" or "may be partially produced with genetic engineering" would be required on the back of the package -- similar to what is now required for ingredient or allergen labeling. For whole foods, like the sweet corn coming soon to a Walmart near you, a sign would be posted on the store shelf with the words "genetically engineered." The aim is simply to offer consumers additional information about the contents of the foods they purchase.

2) "The safety and benefits of these ingredients are well established."

Unfortunately, no long-term studies exist on either the safety or benefits of GMO ingredients, so Monsanto has no basis for making such a claim. Indeed, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not even require safety studies of genetically engineered foods. Meanwhile, some independent studies raise questions about links to allergies and other potential health risks.

3) "The American Medical Association just re-affirmed that there is no scientific justification for special labeling of bioengineered foods."

This statement, while true, is taken out of context and is misleading because the AMA also (for the first time) called for mandatory premarket safety studies of GMOs. As Consumers Union recently noted in its reaction to AMA's announcement, labeling and testing logically go together:

The AMA's stance on mandatory labeling isn't consistent with its support for mandatory pre-market safety assessments. If unexpected adverse health effects, such as an allergic reaction, happen as a result of GE, then labeling could perhaps be the only way to determine that the GE process was linked to the adverse health effect.

4) Food companies "have had the choice" to use GM ingredients.

Choice is a good thing; however, consumers have never had the choice. Prop 37 will give consumers a long-overdue choice about eating genetically engineered food.

5) "FDA says that such labeling would be inherently misleading to consumers."

Of course FDA refuses to require GMO labeling, thanks to Monsanto's arm-twisting that began more than 20 years ago. Food Democracy Now's Dave Murphy explained the FDA decision in May upon its 20-year anniversary, which came as a result of a broader deregulatory push by the first Bush administration:

Twenty years ago this week, then-Vice President Dan Quayle announced the FDA's policy on genetically engineered food as part of his "regulatory relief initiative." As Quayle explained in the 1992 press conference, the American biotechnology industry would reap huge profits "as long as we resist the spread of unnecessary regulations."

Dan Quayle's 1992 policy announcement is premised on the notion that genetically engineered crops are "substantially equivalent" to regular crops and thus do not need to be labeled or safety tested. The policy was crafted by Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lawyer who was hired by the Bush FDA to fill the newly created position of deputy commissioner of policy.

Five years earlier, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush visited a Monsanto lab for a photo op with the developers of Roundup Ready crops. According to a video report of the meeting, when Monsanto executives worried about the approval process for their new crops, Bush laughed and told them, "Call me. We're in the dereg businesses. Maybe we can help."

Call they did. It's typical for corporations to get their policy agenda approved through back-channel lobbying and revolving door appointments and then point to the magical policy outcome as evidence of scientific decision-making.

6) "Consumers have broad food choices today, but could be denied these choices if Prop 37 prevails."

There is no basis in logic that consumers could be denied food choices. Indeed, Proposition 37 actually broadens the meaningful food choices available through greater transparency. Right now, people are eating in the dark.

7) "Interestingly, the main proponents of Proposition 37 are special interest groups and individuals opposed to food biotechnology who are not necessarily engaged in the production of our nation's food supply."

In fact, quite a large number of food producers, farmers and others very much "engaged in the production of our nation's food supply" support the campaign. (See the growing list of endorsements.) Speaking of "special interest groups" wouldn't that label apply to the likes of Monsanto and all the industrial food producers who oppose Proposition 37?

8) "Beneath their right to know slogan is a deceptive marketing campaign aimed at stigmatizing modern food production."

"Modern food production" -- is that Monsanto's latest euphemism for scientifically altering the genetic code of the food supply? In truth, nothing is hidden "beneath" the Right to Know campaign, that's all it's about. But because Monsanto has no good argument for why consumers don't have the right to know how their food is produced, it has to resort to distracting deceptions.

9) "[Proponents] opinions are in stark contrast with leading health associations."

Another look at the long list of Prop 37 endorsements reveal that Monsanto and friends are actually out of step with leading health associations, such as:

American Public Health Association

American Medical Students Association

American Academy of Environmental Medicine

Physicians for Social Responsibility, California chapters

California Nurses Association

10) "The California proposal would serve the purposes of a few special interest groups at the expense of the majority of consumers."

Again, logic defies this talking point, especially since all polling indicates a "majority of consumers" want GMO food to be labeled. Indeed, the most recent California poll shows the proposition winning by a 3-to-1 margin. No wonder Monsanto has to resort to such nonsensical talking points.

August 09, 2012

Cornucopia Institute files legal complaint against manufacturers

- Common Dreams staff

A non-profit consumer advocacy and research organization has filed a formal legal complaint with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) against several infant formula manufacturers it says are adding synthetic preservatives to certified organic infant formula.

Group says this is just latest example of manufacturers betraying the "organic" requirements for instant baby formula. The Organic Foods Production Act, passed by Congress in 1990, explicitly bans synthetic preservatives in organic food., but the Wisonsin-based Cornucopia Institute claims that a variety of producers have added more than a dozen unapproved synthetic ingredients to organic infant formula over the past five years.

“This is another blatant violation of the federal law governing organics by multi-billion dollar corporations that apparently think they can get away with anything,” says Charlotte Vallaeys, Director of Farm and Food Policy at The Cornucopia Institute.

The preservatives are beta carotene and ascorbyl palmitate, synthetics that are added to infant formula to prevent the oxidation and rancidity of ingredients such as the controversial patented supplements DHA and ARA, manufactured by Martek Biosciences Corporation (Royal DSM) and marketed as Life'sDHA®.

When formula with Life'sDHA® first came on the market, the FDA received numerous adverse reaction reports from parents and healthcare providers who noted serious gastrointestinal symptoms in babies who had previously tolerated formula without the Martek DHA and ARA oils.

“This is not the first time that the pharmaceutical companies and agribusinesses, that manufacture infant formula, have quietly added to organic formula the same synthetic ingredients that they use in their conventional versions without first seeking the legally required approval for use in organics,” says Vallaeys.

In its complaint, Cornucopia also asked the USDA to investigate the formula manufacturers’ organic certifying agent, Quality Assurance International (QAI). QAI is one of the largest organic certifying agents, and has come under fire in the past for certifying organic livestock operations that failed to meet the organic standards for animal welfare and outdoor access. QAI has also allowed its clients to add a number of other allegedly illegal synthetic ingredients to organic food and livestock feed.

“Consumers should be able to trust that the organic label represents foods that are free from unnecessary synthetic ingredients, and they rely on third-party certification by USDA-accredited certifying agents,” said co-director of the institute Mark Kastel.

Cornucopianamed the following brands of organic infant formula in its complaint to the USDA: Earth’s Best, Similac Organic, Vermont Organics, Bright Beginnings and Parent’s Choice (sold by Walmart).

Similac Organic is produced by Abbott Laboratories, a $30 billion pharmaceutical corporation. The other brands are produced by PBM Nutritionals, owned by Perrigo, a $2 billion dollar pharmaceutical corporation.

The only commercially available baby formula available in US stores that does not contain these synthetic preservatives is Baby’s Only Organic, manufactured by Nature’s One. Baby’s Only Organic is certified organic by OneCert.

August 02, 2012

After 45 years of hard work and grassroots struggle, the organic community has built up a $30-billion organic food and farming industry and community. This consumer and small farmer-driven movement, under steady attack by biotech and Big Food lobbyists, with little or no help from the federal government, has managed to create a healthy and sustainable alternative to America’s disastrous, chemical and energy-intensive system of industrial agriculture. Consumer demand is behind strong organic sales. Conscious of the health hazards of genetic engineering and chemical agriculture, and the mortal threat of global warming and climate change, millions of Americans are demanding food and other products that are certified organic.

It’s a hopeful sign that, in spite of economic recession, organic foods now make up 4.2% of all grocery store sales. However given the magnitude of the country’s public health, environmental, and climate crisis, 10% annual growth in the organic sector is simply not enough to reach the proverbial “tipping point” before our current crisis metastasizes into what can only be described as a catastrophe.

In the food sector, we cannot continue to hand over 90% of our consumer dollars to out-of-control, biotech, chemical-intensive, energy-intensive, greenhouse gas polluting corporations and "profit at any cost" retail chains. The growth of the Organic Alternative is literally a matter of survival. After two decades of biotech bullying and force-feeding unlabeled and hazardous genetically engineered foods to animals and humans, it's time to move beyond defensive measures - such as petitioning the FDA - and go on the offensive. With organic farming, climate stability, and public health under the gun of the gene engineers and their partners in crime, it's time to do more than complain. With over 1/3 of U.S. cropland already contaminated with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), with mounting scientific evidence that GMOs cause cancer, birth defects, and serious food allergies, and with new biotech mutants like alfalfa, lawn grass, ethanol-ready corn, 2,4 D-resistant crops, and genetically engineered trees and animals being fast-tracked for approval by the government, with absolutely no pre-market safety-testing required, time is running out.

The burning question for us all then becomes how - and how quickly - can we move healthy, organic products from a 4.2% market niche, to the dominant force in American food and farming?

The first step is to change our labeling laws. Nearly 80% of non-organic processed foods, including so-called “natural” foods, contain genetically engineered bacteria, viruses, antibiotic-resistant genes, and foreign DNA. Yet none of these foods are labeled. No wonder only 30% of Americans realize they’re probably eating GMOs on a regular basis. Health-minded and environmentally conscious consumers actually buy more products marketed or labeled as “natural” ($50 billion a year) than they do organic ($30 billion), either because they don’t understand the difference between organic and “natural”, and/or because so-called “natural” foods are typically cheaper than certified organic. For instance, two-thirds of the foods sold in Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe’s are not organic, but rather “natural.” Polls indicate that consumers are confused about the qualitative difference between organic and natural products, with a near-majority believing that “natural” means “almost organic.”

It’s time to put an end to this massive fraud, and take back our right to know what’s in our food. Since the federal government and the White House seem to listen more to Monsanto and Big Ag than the 90% of Americans who support mandatory labeling of GMOs, OCA and allied activists have decided to bypass Washington politicians and take matters into our own hands.

What is likely the most important food fight in a generation is unfolding in California. The grassroots-powered Nov. 6 California Ballot Initiative (Proposition 37) to require labels on genetically engineered foods and to ban the routine industry practice of marketing GMO-tainted foods as “natural” or “all natural” is approaching a decisive moment. The outcome of this ballot initiative will determine whether GMO foods are labeled, not only in California but across the entire United States and Canada as well. It’s time for all of us who care about an organic and sustainable future to close ranks and support the Nov. 6 California Ballot Initiative (Proposition 37). Over 650 organizations, organic companies and retail stores have already endorsed the campaign. But we need thousands more.

We need volunteers to help out - in California and nationwide. Please sign up here if you are willing to approach the managers of the retail stores, CSA, restaurants, or farmers market where you regularly buy your organic food and ask them to join the more than 100 retail stores that have already publicly endorsed Prop 37. Once your neighborhood health food store or co-op has endorsed the campaign, you can get them further involved in distributing campaign information and raising money. CA and our allies in this campaign to pass Prop 37 have raised almost $4 million dollars so far, but Monsanto, the Grocery Manufacturers, and the Farm Bureau will spend $20-40 million to defeat Prop 37. Thank you to the 15,000 people who have already made donations to OCA or the OCF for this campaign, but we need to raise even more.

Restoring consumers' right to know, banning the industry practice of marketing GMO-tainted foods as “natural,” and starting to drive genetically engineered foods off supermarket shelves will not solve all of the life and death issues that are currently staring us in the face: the climate crisis, endless wars, economic depression, corporate control over government, and the health crisis. But cutting Monsanto and the biotechnocrats down to size and restoring consumer choice are good first steps toward sustainability and a healthy food and farming system. Just as important, in political terms, by defeating the Biotech Bullies and indentured politicians, we can begin to restore the tattered self-confidence of the American body politic. A resounding victory by the organic community in the California Prop 37 campaign will prove to ourselves and the currently demoralized body politic that we can indeed take back control over the institutions and public policies that determine our daily lives. Now is the time to move forward. Support Prop 37, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Foods Act. This is the food fight of our lives. Please join and support us in this historic struggle.

July 03, 2012

SEATTLE — The cultivated rusticity of a farmers’ market, where dirt-dusted beets are status symbols and earnest entrepreneurs preside over chunks of cheese, is a part of weekend life in cities across the nation as the high days of the summer harvest approach.

But beyond the familiar mantras about nutrition or reduced fossil fuel use, the movement toward local food is creating a vibrant new economic laboratory for American agriculture. The result, with its growing army of small-scale local farmers, is as much about dollars as dinner: a reworking of old models about how food gets sold and farms get financed, and who gets dirt under their fingernails doing the work.

“The future is local,” said Narendra Varma, 43, a former manager at Microsoft who invested $2 million of his own money last year in a 58-acre project of small plots and new-farmer training near Portland, Ore. The first four farmers arrived this spring alongside Mr. Varma and his family, aiming to create an economy of scale — tiny players banded in collective organic clout. He had to interrupt a telephone interview to move some goats.

Economists and agriculture experts say the “slow money” movement that inspired Mr. Varma, a way of channeling money into small-scale and organic food operations, along with the aging of the farmer population and steep barriers for young farmers who cannot afford the land for traditional rural agriculture, are only part of the new mix.

A looming shortage of migrant workers, with fewer Mexicans coming north in recent years, could create a kind of rural-urban divide if it continues, with mass-production farms that depend on cheap labor losing some of their price advantages over locally grown food, which tends to be more expensive. From the vineyards of California to the cherry orchards of Oregon, big agriculture has struggled this year to find willing hands. Local farm sales are becoming more stable, predictable and measurable. A study last fall by the Department of Agriculture said that local revenues had been radically undercounted in previous analyses that mainly focused on road stands and markets. When sales to restaurants and stores were factored in, the study said, the local food industry was four times bigger than in any previous count, upward of $4.8 billion.

More predictable revenue streams, especially at a time when so many investments feel risky, are creating a firmer economic argument for local farming that, in years past, was more of a political or lifestyle choice.

“How you make it pay is to get closer to the customer,” said Michael Duffy, a professor of economics at Iowa State University, capsuling the advice he gives to new farmers in the Midwest.

Labor, as it has been for generations in the United States, is still the big wrinkle for local growers. But in many cases, experts like Professor Duffy say, the local food system is increasingly going its own way, differentiated from the traditional labor pool of migrant workers that the United States’ mainstream produce system depends on. Many larger local farms hire Hispanic workers, but at more farm stands and markets, buying local also means, in subtle or not so subtle ways, buying native.

“A byproduct of local food is that local hands are more likely to be producing, harvesting, packing and marketing it, especially for new farmers on small-scale farms,” said Dawn Thilmany McFadden, an agricultural economist at Colorado State University who is part of a leadership team for a training program for beginning farmers.

In other instances, Hispanics who had worked as low-wage laborers are now becoming entrepreneurs. A three-year-old nonprofit group north of Seattle, Viva Farms, specifically aims to help Hispanic farmers get started, with assistance in language training and in understanding the vagaries of the marketplace.

“We work harder now,” said Misael Morales, 35, describing the main difference between life as a farm laborer and as an entrepreneur.

Mr. Morales came to the United States from Oaxaca, Mexico, as a teenager, and last year he and his brother, Salvador, 32, began farming a one-acre plot at Viva Farms. They mainly grow lettuce for markets and restaurants in Seattle.

“Early or late, when something has to get done, you do it,” he said.

Viva Farms’ director of business and organizational development, Ethan Schaffer, said former wage workers like the Morales brothers are often surprised when they realize the prices and profit margins that local organic produce can fetch — something, he said, that rarely penetrates down to the daily life of a migrant picker.

“They get the ag part, and once they realize how the market works, they’re off and running,” Mr. Schaffer said.

Other new farmers, like Christopher Brown, 26, a former Marine infantryman who worked his first day last month at Grow Washington, an organic farm north of Seattle, have more complex motives. Taking a break from the carrot-cleaning table, he says he dreams of building an organization to help bring other veterans into local farming.

Other urban-focused farms, including one in Oregon City, Ore., called C’est Naturelle, are offering, starting this month, one-stop shopping services: community-supported agriculture subscriptions to supply a family a full diet of food from one place, from eggs and butter to beef and greens.

Mr. Varma’s project near Portland, called Community by Design, was inspired, he said, by the Slow Money movement, which has emerged in recent years as a vehicle for financing local, organic food production through groups like Slow Money, a nonprofit group in Boulder, Colo., that connects investors, entrepreneurs and farmers. Of $18 million raised in the last two years by Slow Money, $4 million — the biggest chunk — landed here in the Pacific Northwest, said Woody Tasch, the group’s chairman.

But the economic path for local food is still in many ways difficult.

The federal farm bill, passed by the Senate last month, has provisions to support farmers’ markets. But in Washington State, a program aimed at helping growers build direct marketing relationships with grocers or restaurants died last year in a round of budget cuts.

For Jenny and Alex Smith, both 25, a couple since they met in college — now first-year farmers on a tiny plot about an hour north of Seattle — the economic equation comes down to lowering costs and needs.

They live in a recreational vehicle with no television or Internet service, and they hope to break even this year, earning perhaps $1,600 a month through farmers’ markets and subscriptions for weekly produce packages, so far mostly from friends and family. But they say a farming life still feels, to them, full of promise. They had boring office jobs in Seattle, they said, and now they have a farm dog named Banjo.